


Infinite Distance (Finite Time Remix)

by Unforgotten



Category: X-Men (Alternate Timeline Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Space, Alternate Universe - Still Have Powers, Genocide, M/M, Remix, Reunions, Separations
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-16
Updated: 2018-06-16
Packaged: 2019-05-24 03:11:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,282
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14946492
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Unforgotten/pseuds/Unforgotten
Summary: A month ago, far-flung Genosha went dark on every communications channel.Whatever happened there, it has little enough relevance for young Charles Xavier, resident of Graymalkin-- until the day he receives a distress call from Erik Lehnsherr, Genosha's only surviving citizen...





	Infinite Distance (Finite Time Remix)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lachatblanche](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lachatblanche/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Infinite Distance](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14400198) by [lachatblanche](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lachatblanche/pseuds/lachatblanche). 



The comm chimed as Charles stepped out of the bathroom. He wrapped the towel around his waist and dashed to answer it, on the assumption it was more likely to be his stepfather than anyone else. Kurt would give him even more hell later if Charles ducked him now.

On the screen above his desk, a boy appeared, a stranger.

"You're on the wrong frequency," Charles said, and motioned to end the call—only, he began to lose his towel, and was forced to grab for it instead. Later, he'd think, with a kind of horror: _He needed me, and I didn't see it. I nearly turned away from him without ever realizing what I'd done._ Now, he wrapped his towel even more firmly around himself, and said, "How did you get onto it in the first place? I'm not listed."

"My auto-tuner is broken. I'm trying frequencies by hand," the boy said.

Behind him was a set of consoles, red and green lights blinking or shining by turns. There was a window, too, showcasing a sea of stars and blackness.

"Are you on a ship?" Charles asked, annoyance suddenly fled. He'd met pilots before, of course, but he'd never spoken to someone currently _in space_.

"I'm aboard the _Magneto_ , en route to New Havana from Genosha."

"Genosha? But Genosha's gone _dark_."

The boy straightened up, grimaced. "I'm alone, and in flight for my life. I have food, water, and life support sufficient for the journey. My cryo unit is malfunctioning. My information banks are down, and unable to send or receive downloads. My navigation system is functioning, but I am unable to alter course." Now he looked Charles straight in the eyes. "As a citizen of the Galactic Collective, I demand aid and sanctuary from any fellow citizen able to provide it."

Words as old as the Collective itself, code as old as star travel. Charles had rarely been off the surface of Graymalkin, and then only for a day trip to the three moons. He'd never in his life expected to witness someone speaking those words outside a vid—never mind directing them at himself.

 _Genosha_ , he thought. It had gone dark by ansible nearly a month ago. Since then, no vessel had been known to come out of its corner of space, and those that had been approaching...once they came within a certain distance of its sun, they too had gone dark. The networks buzzed with theories anew every day—disease, invasion, wormholes—but all anyone knew for certain was that Genosha's system still appeared to be there. It would be years before the Senate got around to a vote on whether or not to send their forces; it would be fifty years longer before any fleet could transmit an answer. The journey to Genosha was long, the more brutal sailing to any named planet.

"I'll help you," Charles said. "I don't know how, exactly? I mean, I don't know yet. But I will. I promise I will."

The boy sagged a little, then said, much more awkwardly than the rest, "I thank you."

"What's your name? For my report. And for me, I suppose."

"Erik Lehnsherr."

"Splendid." He reached for the control that would ensure the recording of this conversation would be kept beyond the first twenty-four hours after the call ended. "I'm Charles, Charles Xavier." At Erik's grunted and not particularly friendly acknowledgment of this, he was forced to add, "You know, I think you're supposed to request aid and sanctuary. Not _demand_ it."

Erik grinned—not the sweet smile Charles would come to know in the fullness of time, but something harder, and much more wild. "I wasn't going to let you think you had a choice."

Later, Charles would think he never had thought he did, anyway.

***

The full horror of Erik's situation didn't hit Charles until he met with his academic adviser the next day. Dr. McCoy had always said Charles could come to him with anything, and he would surely have a better idea of where to start than Charles did.

When Charles had finished his story, and produced the transcript of his conversation with Erik, Dr. McCoy said, slowly, "I'll compile a list of names and frequencies for you." But for all the practiced calm in his voice, his mind was practically screaming about fifty years, fifty _years_. "I would advise you not to get your hopes up. There may not be much anyone can do. Your friend is very far from here, and in a terrible situation."

Charles must have said something in response—must have made some assurance, offered some thanks followed by some farewell—but he would never be able to recall precisely what it had been. All he would remember was the visceral knowledge that had come upon him in Dr. McCoy's office.

He'd known before, of course. He'd had all the facts. Erik had told them to Charles himself. It was only that he hadn't yet put it all together in an order that made sense emotionally to him. It took him longer to do that than it did for other people. It took him longer when he was alone in his mind, when he couldn't hear the other person's meaning and feelings behind their words.

Erik was on a ship just outside Genosha's system. It would take him fifty years to get to New Havana—and since his cryo unit was broken, he'd be awake for all of it. He was Charles' age now, or close to; he'd be nearly seventy by the time he landed. Until then, he'd be alone.

 _Never journey alone._ It was the most important tenet of space travel, the one even terrestrials like Charles knew by heart. It was one thing to travel alone, to skip from this planet to that one, if they were near one another. A month or two alone on a ship wasn't a picnic, but it wasn't a horror, either. But to journey alone...

A year would be enough to scar a person for life, five years enough to drive anyone mad beyond the saving. Erik's journey would be ten times that.

It had been a lifetime since solitary confinement had been permitted in any prison on any Collective planet, yet Erik had been sentenced to it for a lifetime with no trial but circumstance.

***

"Do you have anything yet?" Erik asked, when Charles contacted him that night.

Charles had to admit he didn't. "I've got a few meets set up for next week, though. An ambassador and two senators. Cross your fingers."

"Why did you bother calling, then?"

A month, Charles reminded himself. Erik could already have been alone for as long as a month. "I didn't want you to get lonely while you wait."

"I'm not lonely," Erik said, though he hadn't been the one to disconnect their conversation the last time, and would be the first to disconnect only once.

Still, his initial abruptness aside, Erik showed no signs of impatience as Charles talked and talked and talked, until his throat was nearly raw from telling Erik his own life story (for lack of a more interesting subject). It was well past 0200 before Charles finally disconnected them, and only then because his eyelids were so heavy and full of sand he was quite certain he'd drifted off for a moment here or there.

***

' _We can't help you. Try this other name, this other frequency, your elected official, the local librarian._ '

Without exception, everyone Charles managed to get an audience with wrote Erik off halfway through his presentation. Between 'broken cryo unit' and 'seventeen years old' and 'alone,' the answer was always clear: Code or no code, no one was going to spend millions of credits to _try_ to save a nobody. Words or no words, no one was going to volunteer to give up everything in their life in order to intercept a single, unknown boy who would be mad if not dead by the time they arrived.

The worst thing about it—the part he always shoved down as deeply as it would go before connecting with Erik's ship again—was that Charles couldn't actually argue they were wrong. He wanted to. He had arguments a mile long about Erik's worth. There was no point in making any of them, because physics and neurology and everything else was against him.

***

One night, several months after they'd begun talking, Charles asked, "What happened on Genosha?"

Erik had let slip enough by now for Charles to know he'd had a mother, a father, a younger sister, all gone now. Other than that, he'd let slip nothing. Whenever Charles tried to lead him toward the answers the entire galaxy was clamoring for, Erik found a way to dodge the subject. With anyone else, Charles would have teased it out of their mind regardless, could have led them to the answers without ever actually asking the question. With Erik, all he had to go on was what Erik told him.

"Why do you want to know?" Erik asked after a long moment. He stiffened, looking more guarded than he had since the first day. "Are you 'simply dying' of curiosity?"

Even a hobbled telepath could see the danger there. Charles rued having told Erik about the galaxy-wide speculation as part of one of his roundabout attempts to get him to open up.

"I am curious, a bit," Charles admitted. He'd already discovered the way Erik treated evasions: As enemies to be rooted out, and stamped on. "And...I want to know more about you. What you've been through. And, depending on what happened...well, knowing might give me some leverage."

"I'll think about it."

"Do you want to talk about something else now?"

"Yes."

Thinking this couldn't have been what his various teachers had meant when they'd said he needed to learn to maneuver complex social situations without relying on his telepathy, Charles said, "I had another argument with Kurt today. He had papers for me to to sign, claimed they were something to do with my rental properties—as if he thought I wouldn't read them! Well, I did, of course, and they were actually to do with a ship he wants to buy with my inheritance. I swear he thinks his nullifier makes me completely stupid."

Charles nattered on in a similar vein for a while. Kurt's transgressions always made for a good vent, and Erik could usually be relied upon to respond with a distinctly Genoshan outrage anytime Charles mentions nullifiers, suppressants, or anything else related to the artificial control of mutants' powers. Tonight, however, he seemed even farther away than he was, responding to each of Charles' paused with a grunt of acknowledgment or 'uh-huh.'

Charles couldn't help but trail off eventually.

"I should get going," he said, though it was only 2300, and he hadn't gone to bed this early since before they'd met. It wasn't as if Erik were interested in what he had to say anyway.

Erik looked at him blankly a moment, then seemed to snap back from wherever he'd been. "You really want to know what happened."

"I'd be honored to hear it."

He knew immediately: those words were the wrong ones. To assume any honor in whatever had sent Erik in flight from his home planet alone was a _faux pas_ with the chance to ruin everything between them.

Charles opened his mouth to get ahead of Erik's rage, to apologize—but then Erik began to speak, as if he hadn't noticed anything wrong with what Charles had said.

All Charles could do from there was bear witness.

***

"It was a genocide," Charles said, at his meeting a few days later. "Not a war, not a disease, not any celestial phenomenon. At first, they were peaceful. It lasted until they crippled the Genoshan fleet and communications—with what technology, I don't know, but not a single vessel was unaffected. When Genosha lay defenseless, the slaughter began. They're gone, all of them except Erik."

Senator Kelly looked at him, thinking—and what he was thinking was foul. So, 75% of the galaxy's mutants had been wiped out in a single blow. Was he supposed to care? Was he supposed to weep? How soon could he get this kid out of his office, and go on to the issues his constituents gave a shit about?

"Maybe you misunderstood your friend," he said, a kindly man speaking in a kindly tone. "If none of their ships worked, how could he have gotten off the planet?"

Before Erik, Charles hadn't yet known a lost cause when he met one. He knew this one now.

"Forget it," he said.

By the time the door spiraled closed behind him, the senator had.

***

"I think you might be able to get your cryo unit working," Charles said. "If I helped you."

He'd only thought of it this morning, on his way to school. Modern cryo units were made of polymers, and their inner workings kept an industrial secret. But the older ones—like in Erik's family's ancestral ship, which had carried his great-great-greats to Genosha generations ago—were largely made of steel and other alloys, and had had their specs in the public domain ever since they stopped making them.

Once he'd thought of it, he'd known right away what had stopped Erik from trying: His data banks were down, so he wouldn't have had the first idea where to start. He'd been on an engineering path in school, but either they hadn't covered this yet, or it hadn't been in the curriculum to begin with. Who needed a working knowledge of how to repair the systems on a Magnum Class IV vessel, when it had been a century since they'd made VIs?

Erik's family's ancient ship had saved his life, making it off the planet when no newer ship could so much as make it off the ground. Now, perhaps it would save his life again.

Charles explained all this to the best of his ability.

When he'd finished, something seemed to pass over Erik's face. Charles wasn't the best at reading faces. He'd never had to before Erik. But now he thought he saw a few things there—surprise, then understanding, following by regret and, finally, resolve—before Erik said, "All right."

Charles was not what you'd call mechanically-inclined, but that was fine; all he turned out to be needed for was his ability to read. After Erik had revisited the cryo unit to refresh his memory of the problem, Charles read the downloads he'd pulled up on the net, header by header, sub header by sub header, until Erik said, "That one."

The contents of that file, and the next five or six Erik asked him to read (and occasionally asked Charles to hold up to the screen, in those instances where Erik insisted Charles couldn't be reading it correctly), occupied them for the next month. At the beginning of each day's call, Erik would relay his results for the day. Charles would then read the next section, and Erik would disappear from the viewscreen for anywhere from five minutes to an hour before returning with results or a lack thereof.

One day, he'd been gone for only about ten minutes when he returned and said, "I think it's working."

"Really?"

"I'm running a simulation to check, but—yes. I think it's up."

When Erik went to check the results of the simulation an hour later, he returned to say it appeared to be working by every metric they had.

"Excellent," Charles said.

Together, they decided Erik would go under in another week, or perhaps two. That was enough time to allow for the full-length simulation that ought to be run prior to a sleep as long as Erik's would be.

It wasn't until they'd said their goodbyes for the night that Charles realized. He'd been too focused on saving Erik, on making certain the isolation of his journey wouldn't take its toll. It didn't occur to him until the deed was done that by the time Erik's ship found civilization again, Erik would still be seventeen, while Charles would be going on seventy.

Six months ago, he hadn't known Erik existed. Now, he didn't see how he was supposed to live the bulk of his life without him.

***

It ended up being three weeks.

Erik was strange during their conversations, one minute more open than he'd ever been, as closed off the next one as he'd been on the worst days.

As for Charles...for the first week and a half, he kept fighting the urge to cry, and more than once had to stop himself from begging Erik not to leave him. It wouldn't have been fair, wouldn't have been right. There was no other way. Erik was coming as quickly as he could.

In the second week and a half, Charles discovered a new resolve. He'd never expected to find such a thing inside himself, but there it was, deeper than skin, deeper than bone, right in the foundation of him. He'd do this, and see it through.

And so, the last time he and Erik spoke, it was Erik who spoke of regret: "I wouldn't," he said, in a voice rawer than any Charles had expected to hear. Though they were close enough in age, Erik had always seemed older and more worldly to Charles—but now he seemed younger, vulnerable as he never had before, despite his circumstances. "I wouldn't go, I wouldn't leave you—except there's something I have to do. I have to avenge them someday. I can't waste my life on the journey."

"I understand," Charles said, and despite his new resolve, his throat was sore and his eyes stung. "It's all right. There's no need to get upset about it. We'll see each other in a few decades. It'll hardly seem like any time at all."

"It will for you, you idiot," Erik said, and there was nothing left but for Charles to agree with him.

They closed communications hours later, around 0500 for Charles. Charles hadn't slept all night, and he didn't sleep in the remaining hour or so, either. Instead, he thought of Erik, as if by thinking of the steps Erik must now be taking, he could be wish him in some way. Perhaps Erik was now at the cryo unit controls, punching in the time he wanted, double and triple checking the numbers. Perhaps now he was stripping off his clothes, climbing in. Perhaps Erik was even now lying on his back as glass thudded closed above him and the gel filled the compartment, and his mouth, and his nose, forcing him into his fifty years of sleep.

Erik was sleeping by now. Surely he was, he must be. From now until a lifetime from now.

***

Charles gave it three more weeks. He couldn't bear the thought of not being here to answer if Erik called to tell him it hadn't worked. Three weeks was where most of the things went wrong with cryo-storage, so if he hadn't heard anything by then, he could assume everything was working as it should.

During those weeks, Charles made his preparations, checked and double-checked his calculations.

Twenty-two days after Erik went under, Charles strolled into the family hangar around 0200, and walked onto the command room of Kurt's new ship. The one he'd wanted Charles to sign the sale papers for, though Charles hadn't given in until last month. The new-fangled one with military-grade cloaking technology and the best automated systems money could buy. The one that definitely didn't scream 'drug dealer or smuggler, take your pick' at _all_ , no, not even a little.

Charles wasn't a pilot, not even close. But you didn't have to be to fly a ship like this. All you had to do was have your voice print on file as its owner ("It's just a formality," Kurt had said, but Charles had read the papers before he signed them, and he knew otherwise. He who put down the money owned the ship, whether or not his stepfather thought he had the balls to take it.)

"Cerebro, are you there?"

The lights came on. " _I am._ "

"Splendid. I'd like to leave Graymalkin in order to rendezvous with a ship."

" _Please input the coordinates of the rendezvous._ "

"I don't have them. Am I correct in thinking you could track the ship if I gave you its communication frequency?"

" _Yes, that is correct._ "

Charles had known it would be—the only specs he'd ever studied as hard had been those for Erik's cryo unit—but still nearly sagged with relief. "All right. I'm inputting it now."

Around him, Cerebro hummed around him, systems activating in advance of their flight.

" _Please indicate other required factors for your journey, such as fastest time or shortest distance._ "

"Get there as quickly as you can without being seen or interfered with, please."

" _Certainly. Shielding and evasive protocols have been activated._ "

"Thank you," Charles said. "Is there anything else I need to do?"

" _No. My automated are functioning correctly._ "

"Well, then. Let's leave now, if you would."

Around him, the walls shuddered with take-off. The view from the command room wasn't very good, so Charles headed to the viewing room. By the time he got there, the house he'd lived in was already a tiny doll's house in the dark. Within a minute or so, the town he'd lived in was only so many dots of light. Soon, the curvature of the planet was visible, thanks to its rising second moon.

***

Several weeks after they'd left Graymalkin's heavily-populated system, Charles went down to the cryo chamber.

"I want to activate one cryo unit," he said when he got there. "I want to wake up when we reach out destination, and not before."

" _My fail safes require cryo units to be deactivated in the case of malfunction. When no lifeforms remain conscious aboard the ship, a single cryo unit may be deactivated if additional input is required._ "

"That's fine, of course," Charles said.

" _Activating one cryo unit now._ "

There were nearly twenty units in the chamber. The nearest one hissed open, and began to fill with gel. Charles removed his clothing, folded it, set it on top of the nearest closed cryo unit. He climbed in and lay down on his back as the gel continued to crawl upward. It was cold, so much colder than he'd expected, causing him to shudder violently. The top hissed shut close to the end, as the gel seeped into his ears and mouth and nose. For a moment, Charles wanted to scream...but the moment passed, and then there was nothing.

***

They said you didn't dream in cryosleep unless you were very fortunate or very unfortunate. They said, if you dreamed in cryo sleep, you would experience all the other lives you'd lived. You'd live every life you'd ever lived, on into infinity. Physicists had long since proven the existence of parallel worlds and parallel selves, but this, legend claimed, was the only way to touch them.

It was nonsense, obviously. There was no scientific backing to the claim, and never had been.

Still, while Charles slept, he dreamed, and in every world he dreamed of and would later remember only faintly, Erik was there with him.

***

After an eternity, the hissing sound came again. Charles say up blindly, shivering in the rush of air. He tried to open his eyes, but his eyelids were stuck together with some sort of gunk. He managed to rub it away in time to make sense of the sucking sound, connect it again to the cold: The gel he'd been lying in had drained away, so all that was left of it was the globs sticking to him. It wasn't clear, as it had been, but was now tinged a light brown.

"Cerebro? Are you there?"

" _I am here. We have reached our destination._ "

"—Really?" If some part of him thought it had felt like an eternity, the bulk of him felt it had been only a moment. "I mean, are you sure?"

" _I am completely sure. We docked with the_ Magneto _five standard minutes ago._ "

"Of course. Sorry. How long was I under?"

" _You entered cryo sleep 28.3 standard years ago._ "

"Okay. All right." Charles hauled himself over the side of the unit.

He dressed as quickly as he could. Only later would he think he should probably have gone through a sonic shower first, and found clothes that hadn't had minute traces of his sweat on them for going on thirty years.

On the way to the docking bay, Charles said, "How does the _Magneto_ look? Is its life support still functional?"

" _Affirmative._ "

"Then I'd like to go over there now, please."

" _Of course._ "

As he entered the docking bay, the bay door spiraled open, leading out to the transparent corridor between ships. Stepping into it was almost like stepping out into space itself.

***

Where the _Cerebro_ was bright and airy, the _Magneto_ was dark and cramped. Magnus-class ships weren't luxury vessels, and the older ones were even less comfortable than their modern counterparts. Charles had to duck his head in most of the doorways, and he was not precisely tall.

The _Magneto_ 's cryo chamber was tiny, five units shoved together in a room best described as a closet. Four had been smashed in to some extent, possibly from some trauma, but more likely from Erik's mad scrounging for parts. Inside the fifth, the farthest from the door, was Erik. The gel he lay in had the same brownish tinge as the residue on Charles' skin. The unit's panel lit up when Charles touched it.

No voice spoke up to ask if Charles wished to end Erik's sleep early...but there was no need for him to retreat to the _Cerebro_ 's data banks. He still recalled everything he'd passed along to Erik, the documentation he'd read and re-read while waiting for Erik to come back and say the latest thing they'd tried had helped, or hadn't. He knew this, and typed in the instructions carefully, double and triple checking to be certain.

The gel began to drain. When it was halfway gone, the chamber groaned open. But Erik didn't move. He continued to lie there, still and quiet, for one minute, then two, then three.

Charles was just about to reach for him, protocol or no protocol, when Erik sat up, gasping awake so abruptly Charles startled back a step.

Erik rubbed the goop from his eyes, as Charles had done just a few minutes before.

He looked up, and their eyes met.

When Charles had thought of this moment, he'd thought Erik would be glad, or furious, or anything in-between. So it wasn't too surprising when Erik's lipped thinned and his eyes hardened—but what _was_ surprising was the direction of his anger, in the first of his actual thoughts Charles was ever privy too.

"You're not real," Erik said, bristling anger and shame inward, not out.

"I am, actually," Charles said. "I couldn't leave you to sail alone, so I took Kurt's new ship, and, well. I'm here."

This wasn't the first time it had happened, not the first time Erik had seen Charles here. It had been happening for weeks now. When it wasn't Charles it was his father, wanting to know why he hadn't looked after Ruthie better; or it was his mother, telling him everything was all right, and to run now.

So perhaps it wasn't surprising that Erik didn't respond to Charles now. He pulled himself out of the cryo chamber in a much more graceful motion than Charles had managed, and turned to check the controls.

"There's nothing wrong with the unit," Charles said, letting the harsh edges of Erik's mind wash over him. Had he really thought it might be strange to meet Erik in person, after all those weeks and months of knowing each other only through a viewscreen? This wasn't like what he'd feared at all. It was more like coming to see an old friend for the first time in years. If neither of you were quite who you'd remembered, you were still the core people you'd always been before. "We should really talk."

At this, Erik looked at him again, his expression flat, his mind a bolt of impatience and pain. "You're not here. You _can't_ be here."

"I took a ship," Charles said. "I came for you. We met nearly thirty years ago, and now we're both here."

"You're not this stupid," Erik muttered, and there came a glimpse of well-worn treads of reasoning: Charles was friendly, effusive, confident. Charles had no reason to give up all the good things in his life, just to come for Erik. Therefore, Charles couldn't be here.

"There's no one for me but you," Charles said, too intent on convincing Erik to give in to the new-old shame, that he wasn't alone because he had to be, but because of some deficiency in himself, an inability to connect with most people beyond the surface level despite the dual advantaged of telepathy and wealth. He hadn't realized how empty his life really was until he'd had Erik, and realized how lonely he'd always been before. "And you're here. So I came. I'm here now. Really, I am."

He reached for Erik, grasped his hand.

Erik closed his eyes.

Then he opened them, and went ballistic.

"What's wrong with you?" he demanded, looming toward Charles with a searing anger much closer to what Charles had expected. "What the fuck did you come here for? I'm not going to _settle down_ with you on some moon when I get there. I'm going to _train_. I'm going to raise an _army_. They think they're immortal, so I'm going to go back and _kill them all_."

At no time had Charles dreamed this was what Erik meant to do, but now that they were here together, he found he wasn't surprised.

"You don't want to be a part of it. You're too—" soft, kind, weak, each word thought of only to be discarded again, "—you don't want to. You gave up your entire life for _nothing_."

Charles' peers would be long since done with school by now, including university; many would have children older than he was, perhaps with children of their own. The professors he'd had in school would for the most part have retired by now; some might even have died. Kurt would have had him declared legally dead some 21.3 standard years ago, giving him more than enough time to squander a fortune. Some word would have come from some quarter about Genosha; a scout fleet might be on its way, might have been on its way for decades. Charles Xavier would be no more than a faint memory to anyone still living. He might as well have never existed at all.

"If you're going to raise an army, you'll need a lieutenant," Charles said, and in that moment it seemed like something greater and wider than either of them, or of the universe they inhabited. "And a better flagship."

It would be some time until Erik fully believed; even when they emerged together from their cryo units on the surface of New Havana, he'd still be having trouble with it. That Charles was here, that Charles really meant it.

For now, though, he submitted to board the _Cerebro_ , in order to continue discussing Charles' perceived stupidity and their next move, in that order.


End file.
